Read Dykette
May. 3rd, 2024 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jajalalaRead Dykette by Jenny Fran Davis. My littlest sibling told me they were reading it, and since I want to connect with them more I decided to pick it up. The story surrounds six women (three more or less F/F partnerships) who have a 10 day trip together at the oldest couple's cabin. Most of the story is about the sometimes strange shenanigans they get up to while there, but it's interspersed with flashbacks and rife with interpersonal conflicts and personal issues. By the end of the book, the word that came to my mind was visceral
The main character, Sasha, had a wonderfully biased point of view. You can see her psychological issues bleeding through her narration, the way she sizes up and judges everyone all the time, projecting the way she fears others are scrutinizing her. She's performative, obsessed with pinning butch/femmes in particular roles, narcissistic, judgemental, and needy. Though she was a frustrating character at times, I love flawed protagonists, so it was delicious to see her fuck up and get messy. Because her narration was so intense and vicious, I sometimes found the things she said uncomfortably relatable, like putting into words thoughts I've had but never dared to articulate (not TOO many times though... ahaha she has a whole bucket full of issues).
Some of the characters had interesting pronoun situations, sometimes but not always being referred to as he/him in the narration. I'm not sure if there was particular intention behind when the narrator used he/him vs she/her, most the characters didn't seem particularly precise about pronouns or identity beyond being gay/lesbian, but I was surprised at how readable it was despite the frequent pronoun switching.
The world/culture described in the book felt very specific. I am bisexual, and I engage with some local queer community, but I'm not particularly deep into "the scene" or whatever one might call it. I'm also not super well-versed in queer/feminist texts beyond tumblr's surface level (I know of Stone Butch Blues is, but I've never read it). This book felt like it was written for a woman & gender studies major who spends all their time with messy lesbians in New York City. There were a lot of references to specific academic texts, and allusions to twitter or instagram drama that various characters were embroiled in. The amount of brand names mentioned also was so absurd at some point my eyes just started skipping over the gibberish of them (I'm not sure if the author cares so much or if it's just meaningful due to Sasha's narration--Sasha is the kind of narrator who 100% would know all the designer brands and notice them on others). Although I believe these type of people exist, I found them somewhat alien to my own experiences.
The raw messiness of the women was refreshing. I've often bemoaned in searching femslash fanfiction how F/F romances tend to be composed of fluff and lacking in tension, sanitized because people hate to imagine women as less-than-perfect. Getting to see a bunch of women who are bad for each other (or at least doing bad/nasty things that frustrate/humiliate the others) was a delicious change of pace that kept me reading. There's also a TON of explicit sex scenes, not all intended to be sexy per se, but all with important narrative/character moments and a raw sexuality that was really great to see for women.
Sometimes though, the messiness got to be TOO much, even for me... spoilers ahead.
Okay so... there is a pretty graphic torture scene involving needles and sewing a person's skin? It's like, a performance art type thing, one of the characters enlists another character to help her do this to herself, it's like consensual, but it's SO visceral and uncomfortable to read... I literally had to stop reading for a bit and started reading Jane Eyre to settle myself... I read of poor little orphan Jane Eyre having the most wretched orphan time and was like "ahhh so relaxing compared to Dykette".
Eventually though I went back to Dykette and read on. It was so uncomfortable. I was hoping to see that it was CGI or maybe there was fake skin involved, but it's pretty clear afterwards it actually happened. It was somewhat funny that afterwards the person who had the stitches in her was relatively unaffected, she was just excited her performance went well, and the real fallout was between Sasha and her boyfriend (butch he/him lesbian) Jesse because Jesse was the one who had been doing it to this other girl... like definitely fascinating metaphors in there, but it was SO grotesque. I didn't realize how disturbed/disgusted I was capable of feeling from just words on a page. Now setting the torture aside...
I was fascinated by Sasha's awfulness, especially towards her partner Jesse. She demands/drives a lot of their interactions, and yet desperately craves for her partner to be the one driving and taking what they want. Like she wants to be DESIRED, desired in the way she wants to be, to be hurt by the force of it, to have someone so in love with her that they cannot control themselves, but to tell her partner to do that and to make them "perform" it takes the point of it away--the point is that they CAN'T help but do it for their own sake, not that they're performing it for HER sake. It's a helpless sort of desire, and probably one of the few things about Sasha that I at least somewhat understood/related to. Some things just feel less authentic when you have to ask for it from your partner!
Even if I understand it though, I found her behavior egregious. Basically any time Jesse tries to bring up his own frustrations, vulnerability, or to accuse her of doing anything wrong, she immediately turns the accusation on him (Like literally, he'll say something like "You always expect me to pick up the slack and make things okay" and she'll be like "You always make me make things okay!!" It was uncomfortably abusive/gaslight-y. There are even several times when Sasha doesn't get the reaction she wants from reflecting the accusation so she apologizes and says she "doesn't know why she said that" which, of course Jesse is frustrated by. Jesse can tell that Sasha is literally just throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what will stick, but still somehow she can't escape.
One particularly painful moment was when people were chatting and the idea of feeling "safe/comforted/loved" came up, and Jesse basically point-blank says to Sasha that Sasha doesn't make him feel safe/comforted/loved. It's such a precise moment that makes clear one of Sasha's central issues: She wants the butch/femme dynamic so she can be the femme, so long as being femme means that she is always the center of the attention, that her feelings will always be the most important, and that she will never have to do anything for her partner. Femininity is her armor that allows her to evade any culpability for her actions, for shouldn't a butch always be responsible for the femme?
Not that Jesse wasn't awful in his own way at times... but Sasha goddamn he should break up with you.
They don't quite breakup at the end (though I wonder if Jesse dropping a bucket of ice over his head is meant to be read as him trying to shed Sasha and his feelings for her, and perhaps implies he will break up with her at some point). They do accidentally destroy a ring that the older couple was going to use to propose, which took me a moment to realize but did make me gasp a little bit. Throughout the trip we see the older couple has their own various issues, and Sasha has a brief sexual tryst with the butch of the older couple (though driven by Jesse kind of cheating a bit with the femme of the other young couple on the vacation first). So although I was sad to see the ring destroyed, I felt like it was making literal the fact that the older butch HAD betrayed her partner with a younger woman, and now this younger couple was literally destroying her attempt to propose to her partner. Even though it was an accident, it spoke to how these women were all tearing each other apart.
I do wish Jesse/Sasha had broken up at the end. And although I kinda got the ring thing, I wished there was a stronger ending (especially considering the torture scene was SO strong, I was expecting something at least half as intense for the end... instead it felt like just an "oof, that sucks" ending. And nothing really resolved.
The ending was very open/unfinished. Perhaps the intention was to emphasize how issues and bad relationships don't resolve neatly in the span of a book, but I ended up just feeling disappointed that there was no resolution. There was also not really a particularly clear central message. At the end it felt like I had just watched a weird tableau of scenes, and each scene might have had relatable/interesting/poignant messages, but they didn't add up to anything grand. There's some frequent themes about butches/femmes, toxic relationship dynamics, performance, and perhaps some pointed notes on the strange dynamic between the older/younger lesbians, but I didn't leave the book feeling particularly like there was an intended point beyond "Damn, these people are fucked up."
I am glad I read the book, just in that it gave me food for thought, and because I got to talk to my littlest sibling afterwards like "UH WHAT WAS *THAT* SCENE???" Still, it definitely wasn't a pleasant read, it was visceral and uncomfortable. Not a good book to relax to, but if you enjoy drama, messiness, and people going way over the line, it might be worth checking this out.
After that I really want something light-hearted. I started Jane Eyre, and will probably pick at it over time, but to lighten my mood I just searched up available romances on Libby and selected the first somewhat intriguing one: The Gentleman's Gambit by Evie Dunmore. I've only just started, but have been having fun so far. Many smouldering glances. I hope the mood/tone will stay light, as I need a break from the heavy and disturbing. If anyone has some tension-filled but low-stakes romance recs (esp F/F), feel free to share. I'd like to have a couple on the backburner. I think intense/depressing/shocking books have value and can be compelling and make me think (I mean look at how much I wrote and thought about Dykette!) but I would like to have like, a chill book to detox after the more intense ones.
The main character, Sasha, had a wonderfully biased point of view. You can see her psychological issues bleeding through her narration, the way she sizes up and judges everyone all the time, projecting the way she fears others are scrutinizing her. She's performative, obsessed with pinning butch/femmes in particular roles, narcissistic, judgemental, and needy. Though she was a frustrating character at times, I love flawed protagonists, so it was delicious to see her fuck up and get messy. Because her narration was so intense and vicious, I sometimes found the things she said uncomfortably relatable, like putting into words thoughts I've had but never dared to articulate (not TOO many times though... ahaha she has a whole bucket full of issues).
Some of the characters had interesting pronoun situations, sometimes but not always being referred to as he/him in the narration. I'm not sure if there was particular intention behind when the narrator used he/him vs she/her, most the characters didn't seem particularly precise about pronouns or identity beyond being gay/lesbian, but I was surprised at how readable it was despite the frequent pronoun switching.
The world/culture described in the book felt very specific. I am bisexual, and I engage with some local queer community, but I'm not particularly deep into "the scene" or whatever one might call it. I'm also not super well-versed in queer/feminist texts beyond tumblr's surface level (I know of Stone Butch Blues is, but I've never read it). This book felt like it was written for a woman & gender studies major who spends all their time with messy lesbians in New York City. There were a lot of references to specific academic texts, and allusions to twitter or instagram drama that various characters were embroiled in. The amount of brand names mentioned also was so absurd at some point my eyes just started skipping over the gibberish of them (I'm not sure if the author cares so much or if it's just meaningful due to Sasha's narration--Sasha is the kind of narrator who 100% would know all the designer brands and notice them on others). Although I believe these type of people exist, I found them somewhat alien to my own experiences.
The raw messiness of the women was refreshing. I've often bemoaned in searching femslash fanfiction how F/F romances tend to be composed of fluff and lacking in tension, sanitized because people hate to imagine women as less-than-perfect. Getting to see a bunch of women who are bad for each other (or at least doing bad/nasty things that frustrate/humiliate the others) was a delicious change of pace that kept me reading. There's also a TON of explicit sex scenes, not all intended to be sexy per se, but all with important narrative/character moments and a raw sexuality that was really great to see for women.
Sometimes though, the messiness got to be TOO much, even for me... spoilers ahead.
Wild Spoilers
Okay so... there is a pretty graphic torture scene involving needles and sewing a person's skin? It's like, a performance art type thing, one of the characters enlists another character to help her do this to herself, it's like consensual, but it's SO visceral and uncomfortable to read... I literally had to stop reading for a bit and started reading Jane Eyre to settle myself... I read of poor little orphan Jane Eyre having the most wretched orphan time and was like "ahhh so relaxing compared to Dykette".
Eventually though I went back to Dykette and read on. It was so uncomfortable. I was hoping to see that it was CGI or maybe there was fake skin involved, but it's pretty clear afterwards it actually happened. It was somewhat funny that afterwards the person who had the stitches in her was relatively unaffected, she was just excited her performance went well, and the real fallout was between Sasha and her boyfriend (butch he/him lesbian) Jesse because Jesse was the one who had been doing it to this other girl... like definitely fascinating metaphors in there, but it was SO grotesque. I didn't realize how disturbed/disgusted I was capable of feeling from just words on a page. Now setting the torture aside...
I was fascinated by Sasha's awfulness, especially towards her partner Jesse. She demands/drives a lot of their interactions, and yet desperately craves for her partner to be the one driving and taking what they want. Like she wants to be DESIRED, desired in the way she wants to be, to be hurt by the force of it, to have someone so in love with her that they cannot control themselves, but to tell her partner to do that and to make them "perform" it takes the point of it away--the point is that they CAN'T help but do it for their own sake, not that they're performing it for HER sake. It's a helpless sort of desire, and probably one of the few things about Sasha that I at least somewhat understood/related to. Some things just feel less authentic when you have to ask for it from your partner!
Even if I understand it though, I found her behavior egregious. Basically any time Jesse tries to bring up his own frustrations, vulnerability, or to accuse her of doing anything wrong, she immediately turns the accusation on him (Like literally, he'll say something like "You always expect me to pick up the slack and make things okay" and she'll be like "You always make me make things okay!!" It was uncomfortably abusive/gaslight-y. There are even several times when Sasha doesn't get the reaction she wants from reflecting the accusation so she apologizes and says she "doesn't know why she said that" which, of course Jesse is frustrated by. Jesse can tell that Sasha is literally just throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what will stick, but still somehow she can't escape.
One particularly painful moment was when people were chatting and the idea of feeling "safe/comforted/loved" came up, and Jesse basically point-blank says to Sasha that Sasha doesn't make him feel safe/comforted/loved. It's such a precise moment that makes clear one of Sasha's central issues: She wants the butch/femme dynamic so she can be the femme, so long as being femme means that she is always the center of the attention, that her feelings will always be the most important, and that she will never have to do anything for her partner. Femininity is her armor that allows her to evade any culpability for her actions, for shouldn't a butch always be responsible for the femme?
Not that Jesse wasn't awful in his own way at times... but Sasha goddamn he should break up with you.
They don't quite breakup at the end (though I wonder if Jesse dropping a bucket of ice over his head is meant to be read as him trying to shed Sasha and his feelings for her, and perhaps implies he will break up with her at some point). They do accidentally destroy a ring that the older couple was going to use to propose, which took me a moment to realize but did make me gasp a little bit. Throughout the trip we see the older couple has their own various issues, and Sasha has a brief sexual tryst with the butch of the older couple (though driven by Jesse kind of cheating a bit with the femme of the other young couple on the vacation first). So although I was sad to see the ring destroyed, I felt like it was making literal the fact that the older butch HAD betrayed her partner with a younger woman, and now this younger couple was literally destroying her attempt to propose to her partner. Even though it was an accident, it spoke to how these women were all tearing each other apart.
I do wish Jesse/Sasha had broken up at the end. And although I kinda got the ring thing, I wished there was a stronger ending (especially considering the torture scene was SO strong, I was expecting something at least half as intense for the end... instead it felt like just an "oof, that sucks" ending. And nothing really resolved.
The ending was very open/unfinished. Perhaps the intention was to emphasize how issues and bad relationships don't resolve neatly in the span of a book, but I ended up just feeling disappointed that there was no resolution. There was also not really a particularly clear central message. At the end it felt like I had just watched a weird tableau of scenes, and each scene might have had relatable/interesting/poignant messages, but they didn't add up to anything grand. There's some frequent themes about butches/femmes, toxic relationship dynamics, performance, and perhaps some pointed notes on the strange dynamic between the older/younger lesbians, but I didn't leave the book feeling particularly like there was an intended point beyond "Damn, these people are fucked up."
I am glad I read the book, just in that it gave me food for thought, and because I got to talk to my littlest sibling afterwards like "UH WHAT WAS *THAT* SCENE???" Still, it definitely wasn't a pleasant read, it was visceral and uncomfortable. Not a good book to relax to, but if you enjoy drama, messiness, and people going way over the line, it might be worth checking this out.
After that I really want something light-hearted. I started Jane Eyre, and will probably pick at it over time, but to lighten my mood I just searched up available romances on Libby and selected the first somewhat intriguing one: The Gentleman's Gambit by Evie Dunmore. I've only just started, but have been having fun so far. Many smouldering glances. I hope the mood/tone will stay light, as I need a break from the heavy and disturbing. If anyone has some tension-filled but low-stakes romance recs (esp F/F), feel free to share. I'd like to have a couple on the backburner. I think intense/depressing/shocking books have value and can be compelling and make me think (I mean look at how much I wrote and thought about Dykette!) but I would like to have like, a chill book to detox after the more intense ones.
no subject
Date: 2024-05-03 07:05 pm (UTC)Is Jesse like a transmasc butch or what's the deal there? I'm just curious given the pronouns.
(My immediate reaction to the cover was "if this is F/F how come the woman is embracing a male cardinal?" but maybe there is a reason! Or is it yet another case of nobody knowing female cardinals aren't red?)
no subject
Date: 2024-05-05 11:46 am (UTC)I don't remember if it's explicitly stated in the text, but Jesse seems somewhat transmasc in that he's had top surgery and seems to like he/him pronouns? But definitely still identifies as a lesbian/dyke/butch. It's a little hard to parse in the main character's narration, where she sometimes uses she/her and sometimes uses he/him for Jesse. I'm not entirely sure how much the pronouns either don't matter to Jesse, or how much are Sasha projecting/implying something depending on the pronouns she uses--I probably should have paid closer attention to if there were any patterns XD.
Okay ngl I didn't know that male cardinals specifically are red, but it makes a lot of sense in the context of this book cover. The cover references a piece of art described in the book, which Sasha describes as a femme human embracing a butch cardinal. In my head I was like "Huh how can she tell this cardinal is butch, it's just a bird?" but if the cardinal has a "male" coloring, perhaps that's how it's butch
no subject
Date: 2024-05-05 12:37 pm (UTC)I think most people miss the cardinal dimorphism because the males are so much more conspicuous, perching in the open and singing loudly (as one is doing outside my window at this very moment). So you often get Christmas cards like this which the card designers clearly don't realize depict M/M couples.
no subject
Date: 2024-05-07 10:51 am (UTC)Yeah I don't think I've ever identified a female cardinal!
no subject
Date: 2024-05-04 06:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-05 11:48 am (UTC)But then when I texted them afterwards they were like "I'm sorry I told you about the book before I got to #ThatScene that was crazy" and I was like "Oh thank goodness you thought that was WILD too???" and we both commiserated with similar feelings about the book overall
no subject
Date: 2024-05-05 06:55 am (UTC)This sounds like one of those pieces of media that you enjoy consuming, but it's very, very unlikely that you'll be picking it up again any time soon.
no subject
Date: 2024-05-05 11:49 am (UTC)